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THE COMING OF TIIE MESSIAH.
801
changed into orderliness at the touch of Prahlada. The monster represents the combined virtues of intelligence and fearlessness (man-intellectualism + lion=courage), hence the combination of wisdom and will; and the column of masonry is a good symbol for the column of the spine which is the seat of many psychic plexi. Being the last enemy on the path, greed is destroyed just as the soul turns away its attention from the world of men, that is to say at the moment of the darkening of the sun of ahamkára, hence neither in the day (when the sun of ahamkåra may be said to be in power) nor at night (after the destruction of the ahamkůra). The rest of the story is lucid enough and needs no further comment.
To sum up : every religion recognizes, more or less definitely, the possibility of a state of existence of surpassing joy which would have no ending. The coming Messiah is an ingenious symbolism with reference to that beatific existence, and conveys no idea of the return of a real or mythical personage of the name of Jesus, who might or might not have lived in the world of men in the past. The soul that destroys its evil karmas becomes its own Saviour, and needs no Liberator from outside itself.
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